"Your Daily Tripod" reflects the personal Fourth Day journeys of its authors and editors. We are happy to have companions like you share in this project. Our prayer is that these reflections will invite and inspire your Fourth Day journey of Piety, Study and Action as much as writing or editing them inspires our journey and brings us all close moments with Jesus and our neighbors.

Monday, January 12, 2015

Have You Come to Destroy Us?

For it was fitting
that he, for whom and through all things exist, in bringing many children to
glory, should make the leader to their salvation perfect through suffering. (Hebrews 2:10)

You
have given your Son rule over the works of your hands.(Psalms 8:7)

In
their synagogue was a man with an unclean spirit; he cried out, “What have you
to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you
are—the Holy One of God!” Jesus rebuked him and said, “Quiet! Come out of him!”
The unclean spirit convulsed him and with a loud cry came out of him. All were
amazed and asked one another, “What is this? A new teaching with authority. He
commands even the unclean spirits and they obey him.” (Mark 1:23-27)

So here we are, two weeks into the New Year. How many of
your resolutions have you already given up on? Or, did you even bother to make
any at all?

In my family, rather than resolutions, we pick a word to
attempt to live by/embrace for the year. Mine for 2015 is “tranquility,”
something I never seem to embrace, no matter how often I purport to crave it.
That inability to say no and hence to overcommit to work and social engagements
leaves me feeling stressed and cranky. While I’m far from perfect, it is also,
I think, the No. 1 in which the devil attempts to come into my life. If you’re
so overbooked that you fall into bed exhausted many nights, you don’t have a
lot of time to cultivate and nurture a one-on-one relationship with the Lord.
That’s the way the devil and his agents, the unclean spirits, like it. It gives
them more space to work on you.

So how am I doing on tranquility so far? It’s been a
mixed bag. I’ve turned down a couple of requests for speaker proposals, but I
was up past eleven one night working on a magazine article. I didn’t scream or
cry when our printer breathed its last or when two techs took six hours to
figure out why some updates weren’t loading, but I was a little jaded and short
with someone who was bubbling over with enthusiasm for something that’s become
a bit rote to me.

Tranquility. With the Lord’s help, I’m inching closer to
pulling out by the roots some of those weeds the devil and his friends planted
to keep me too busy to love Him as I should.

Action

Pray for
Jesus’s help in forcing out an unclean spirit or two in your life. Maybe it’s
pride or fear or arrogance or impulsivity. Doesn’t matter. No spirit is too big
or too small, none too dirty, for Him to come to your aid.